St. Paul Pioneer Press tech blog by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

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St. Paul Pioneer Press tech blog by Julio Ojeda-Zapata

CenturyLink gigabit: elusive mirage

Internet provider CenturyLink created excitement months ago when it announced it would offer fiber-based access via fiber-optic connections directly to inner-city Twin Cities homes with speeds of up to 1 gigabit per second.

That’s comparable to what the Google’s much-ballyhooed Google Fiber service offers in other U.S. cities, and what Minnetonka-based U.S. Internet can provide in certain parts of Minneapolis.

But here’s the funny thing: CenturyLink isn’t saying when or where it will offer gigabit service.

I got excited when a CenturyLink salesman called on me recently at my St. Paul home, and offered to sell me fiber Internet.

“Cool,” I said. “A gigabit?”

“No,” he said, “80 megabits per second.” (That’s less than a tenth of a gigabit.)

He couldn’t tell me whether or when my house might get that fabled gigabit service, so I told him I would stick with my Comcast broadband, thank you very much.

Others are also getting stonewalled by CenturyLink. I got a letter from a University of Minnesota student who wants to move into a gigabit area upon graduation, but can’t get CenturyLink to tell him where that will be.

Here’s the full letter:

Hello Julio, my name is Ben and I am a student at the University of Minnesota,

I found an article you wrote about a month ago on gigabit internet service in the Twin Cities.

In your article you mentioned that Centurylink would offer few details about where the service would be built.

Since Google Fiber has been grabbing headlines announcing where they’d built out their network, it seems a lot of the oligopolistic internet service providers have responded by announcing they’re also building gigabit fiber networks, but without providing much detail.

I myself am a Centurylink customer. I personally tried calling them on the phone and using their online chat service to ask where the network is being built. That way when I graduate and finish my degree I can try to move to one of their new gigabit zones.

Unfortunately their website does not provide any information whatsoever on the location of their current gigabit zones and where they plan on expanding the service.

I asked them whether my house can receive gigabit service, they ask I provide my home address. Then on their end they type in my location into a blackbox and tell me I only qualify for up to 80Mbps speeds.

I then informed them that I am still living at home, but plan to move out soon and would like to know which parts of St. Paul or Minneapolis they are planning to install fiber conduit for gigabit service. Their response was extremely vague and said that due to advertising regulations they can’t tell me.

However if you simply go to US Internet’s website, they not only show you where their gigabit service is offered, but also exactly which blocks they plan to expand the service too. There’s no valid reason for Centurylink to not give such information to either you for the story or a customer like me. I wish you would have pressed them more by explaining how US internet in Minneapolis is more than willing to be honest and straightforward with their customers on this.

Centurylink’s gigabit announcement is simply a classic case of a bait and switch. They promise to offer a superior product, but then say it’s not available and instead offer something else that’s inferior.

I don’t know whether this tactic of Centurylink’s is illegal. Regardless I feel this is something that ought to be discussed considering that nearly all American pay for internet access and that 97% of Americans have at most 2 broadband providers to choose from.